Rep. Don Bacon: US has survived “times of extreme divide”

We have had our times of extreme divide. At the beginning of our Nation’s history, there were very aggressive debates between the followers of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, for example. We saw strife during Andrew Jackson’s Presidency, when many of his opponents feared he was going to be America’s Napoleon, and we survived those times.

But let us not forget the bitter acrimony leading up to the 1860s, when we saw physical assaults on the floor of Congress. That divide was only solved after over 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War.